eucatastrophe n. eucatastrophic [ < Gr. eu, "good" and catastrophe Coined by JRR Tolkien.] 1. (in a narrative) The event that shifts the balance in favor of the protagonist when all seems lost. 2. A happy ending.

April 2011

04/25/2011

I find myself wondering if the title of this movie (the name of its main character) was intentional. Vera from the Latin for: truth) Drake (probably Britain's most famous hero/villain/warrior/pirate) leaves one wondering if the director intends for the movie to force us to decide what we think the truth is about an issue (abortion) by forcing us to decide what the truth is about a person (Vera Drake). She is presented to us as a a kindly old lady who loves her family, loves her neighbors, and loves her employers. A woman who lives to serve and to take on the difficult duties for others. A woman who serves as a buffer against the hard things in life and a solver of life's hard problems. She cleans the brass. She cares for the elderly. She plays matchmaker for the lonely. She brews tea for the sick. Vera Drake is a veritable mother Theressa - a Buddha of compassion for all who are priviledged to know her - and - she solves the problems of young women with unwanted pregnancies on the side. For free I might add.

Without giving too much away, the film makes much of Vera Drake's character and does so in a way that makes it shine next to those who judge her upon their discovery of her alterior calling. Vera's sister-in-law is appalled at Vera's willingness to play the role she does, but she judges while smoking a ciggarette several months pregnant. Vera's son is aghast to discover that his mother would stoop to this level of gross immorality but was himself seen early in the movie dealing out stockings to help young men score with their dates. Vera's friend, the woman who finds the girls in need and takes their money without Vera's knowledge, is not convicted of anything it appears. It is Saint Vera who goes to jail though her character is represented as light-years beyond the "arranger." We even see a certain hypocricy in the legal system itself. For a hundred British Pounds a wealthy young woman can go to a psychiatrist and obtain permission for a perfectly legal and safe proceedure that is unlawful to obtain without such an expenditure. The very act that the judge in Vera's case determines is a heinous crime, is conducted by highly trained staff in open at the rich end of town.

Judged in the light of an Ethic of character, Vera Drake is a Buddisatva. Judged on the basis of her complicity in the termination of fetal life, she is - well - something else. And in 1950 England, she is a criminal. The movie demands that we make a judgement on her as well. At the end, Vera speaks with two other women in jail who are there for the same crime - only they are repeat offenders. We are left to wonder if Vera, when she leaves, if she leaves, will be a broken woman - and if she will return to the role she played in the lives of young women.

To some extent the movie confuses the issue of the Ethics of abortion by asking us to assume that what Vera did is right because Vera is good. It conflates ethical judgments of her motives with ethical judgements of her acts and says that they must be adjudicated together at the same time.

Is Vera Drake, in truth, a hero or a pirate? Perhaps she can be both. But in the chemistry of the ethical life, good and evil may not neutralize each other.

Question for Comment: What is the relationship between your own character and your own behavior? Do you know good people who you believe do unethical things out of ignorance or naivite'? Or are they mutually exclusive?

04/03/2011

“The man who has known pure joy, if only for a moment...is the only man for whom affliction is something devastating. At the same time he is the only man who has not deserved the punishment. But, after all, for him it is no punishment; it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard. For, if he remains constant, what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.”

— Simone Weil

Palestine Blues is a roughly cropped excursion into the people and land impacted by the Israeli Security Wall. It is another digital stone in the electronic intifada, expressing resistance to the process by which the Palestinian people are being shoved and coerced out of land. They are offered money for the land. They refuse it. The land is taken by imminent domain anyway. The wall is built. It separates people from their farms, from their water, from their neighbors. Slowly, imperceptibly, it drives people into smaller enclaves and places demands on them that eventually will cause them, the Israelis believe, to move.

“I will go hit them” a young Palestinian child no more than three years old says of the bulldozers taking down his grandfather’s olive grove. “Stones are better than weapons because they never run out,” says a boy of about ten. “My sons fingernails are more precious to me than any harvest,” says a Palestinian mother who has decided to give up. And a Palestinain farmer reads poetry to console himself.

Sever the hands. Will toungues not denounce “injustice” Sever the toungues. Will not eyes see injustice? Blind the eyes. Will not breath whisper injustice Smother the breath. Will I not find the peace that I yearn for?

What we are doing is necessary, says an Israeli soldier. What we are doing is legal. What we are doing is self-defense. I am sure that the reasons are all quite the same as those that were offered by American soldiers who shoved the Abenaki out of Vermont, the Cherokee out of Georgia, the Seminole from Florida, the Sioux out of the Black Hills in the Dakotas, the Nez Perce out of Oregon, the Mexicans out of California, and the Hawaiians out of Hawaii. “Human beings are so made,”wrote Simone Weil, “that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand."

Question for Comment: Have you ever been forced to leave a place or a person or a thing or a job that you loved? How did you cope with it?